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This mixed-methods study reports on an outreach clinics program designed to deliver genetic services to medically underserved communities in Wisconsin.

We show the geographic distribution, funding patterns, and utilization trends for outreach clinics over a 20-year period. Interviews with program planners and outreach clinic staff show how external and internal constraints limited the program’s capacity. We compare clinic operations to the conceptual models guiding program design.

Our findings show that state health officials had to scale back financial support for outreach clinic activities while healthcare providers faced increasing pressure from administrators to reduce investments in charity care. These external and internal constraints led to a decline in the overall number of patients served. We also find that redistribution of clinics to the Milwaukee area increased utilization among Hispanics but not among African-Americans. Our interviews suggest that these patterns may be a function of shortcomings embedded in the planning models.

Planning models have three shortcomings. First, they do not identify the mitigation of health disparities as a specific goal. Second, they fail to acknowledge that partners face escalating profit-seeking mandates that may limit their capacity to provide charity services. Finally, they underemphasize the importance of seeking trusted partners, especially in working with communities that have been historically marginalized.

There has been little discussion about equitably leveraging genetic advances that improve healthcare quality and efficacy. The role of State Health Agencies in mitigating disparities in access to genetic services has been largely ignored in the sociological literature.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

Circular economy (CE) has gained the attention of the business community with the promise of several trillions of dollars to be gained from finding productive uses for waste materials, and developing new business models focused on extending and reimagining the useful life of products. Industrial symbiosis (IS) involves the shared management of resources among multiple firms, most often within some geographic proximity. IS is particularly focused on the reuse of secondary materials, such as industrial by-products, for which conventional recycling does not exist. IS and CE represent a radical reconceptualization of business models from individual to collective competitive advantage with private and public benefits. IS has been recognized as a novel strategy for businesses and regions interested in implementing the CE. In this chapter, we explore the conditions and circumstances in which IS could play a pivotal role in increasing circularity and sustainability in diverse supply networks.

Purpose – To motivate diversity researchers to reconsider prior findings that use homogeneity as the standard to which diverse teams are compared. To recognize that homogeneity may be just as (if not more) influential than diversity in shaping group processes.

Design/approach – We selectively review the diversity literature and develop a conceptual reinterpretation of prior research. We challenge the general orientation in the literature to treat homogeneity as a baseline to which the effects of diversity are compared. We develop propositions that use diversity as the baseline for homogeneity and provide directions for future research.

Findings – We redigest evidence relating to five core areas in which researchers have identified differences between diverse and homogeneous groups, indicating that homogeneity may lead to (1) an avoidance of disagreement, (2) less use of unique information, (3) overconfidence about performance, (4) more social focus, and (5) less sensitivity to relationship conflict than might be warranted. Based on this reinterpretation of prior literature, we propose that homogeneous teams are prone to delusions, assuming they share similar values, opinions, knowledge, and preferences that make their world seem more homogeneous and comfortable than it may actually be.

Originality/value – We attempt to spur greater understanding of how diversity and homogeneity affect group functioning. We stress the independent effects of homogeneity in shaping group outcomes, an underexplored perspective in the diversity literature.

This study explores the nature and role of CEO discourse in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and especially during the highly complex post-merger integration process. Abstraction from two extensive empirical data sources suggests that executive discourse in M&A can be seen as fitting a taxonomy involving four categories: dubbed the cartel, aesthetic, videogame and holistic communicator. It is furthermore purported that executive sense-making through discourse may need to be monitored around an ideal and permanently oscillating distance between the executive promise and the many different realities that stakeholders experience in the post-merger process: too little distance prevents change from happening, too much distance erodes the belief in the promised possibilities. This distance, named the promise–realities gap, is different for each (type of) stakeholder, as stakeholders perceive both the discoursed promise as also their everyday corporate realities in different manners. This individual perception of discourse and of the multitude of perceived realities and the volatility of their influencing variables exacerbate the successful management of the promise–realities gap.

Emailing does not preclude emotional exchange and many times it causes us to engage in spiralling exchanges of increasingly angry emailing. The purpose of this chapter is threefold: to explore how factors of temporality are related to anger when emailing, to model circumstances that protect against, but also ignite, anger escalation, and to raise a discussion for practitioners of how to avoid damaging email communication. By intersecting literature on communication, information systems, psychology and organisational studies, factors leading to an ‘emotional verge’ are identified and summarised in a model showing factors likely to prime, but also protect against, anger escalation.

Currently heating and cooling in buildings is responsible for over 30% of the primary energy consumption in the United Kingdom with a similar amount in China. We analyze heat pumps and district thermal energy network for efficient buildings. Their advantages are examined (i.e., flexibility in choosing heat sources, reduction of fuel consumption and increased environmental quality, enhanced community energy management, reduced costs for end users) together with their drawbacks, when they are intended as means for efficient building heating and cooling.

A literature review observed a range of operating conditions and challenges associated with the efficient operation of district heating and cooling networks, comparing primarily the UK’s and China’s experiences, but also acknowledging the areas of expertise of European, the United States, and Japan. It was noted that the efficiency of cooling networks is still in its infancy but heating networks could benefit from lower distribution temperatures to reduce thermal losses. Such temperatures are suitable for space heating methods provided by, for example, underfloor heating, enhanced area hydronic radiators, or fan-assisted hydronic radiators. However, to use existing higher temperature hydronic radiator systems (typically at a temperatures of >70°C) a modified heat pump was proposed, tested, and evaluated in an administrative building. The results appears to be very successful.

District heating is a proven energy-efficient mechanism for delivering space heating. They can also be adaptable for space cooling applications with either parallel heating and cooling circuits or in regions of well-defined seasons, on flow and return circuit with a defined change-over period from heating to cooling. Renewable energy sources can provide either heating or cooling through, for example, biomass boilers, photovoltaics, solar thermal, etc. However, for lower loss district heating systems, lower distribution temperatures are required. Advanced heat pumps can efficiently bridge the gap between lower temperature distribution systems and buildings with higher temperature hydronic heating systems

This chapter presents a case for district heating (and cooling). It demonstrates the benefits of reduced temperatures in district heating networks to reduce losses but also illustrates the need for temperature upgrading where building heating systems require higher temperatures. Thus, a novel heat pump was developed and successfully tested.